


Perhaps It Was Freedom Itself That Choked Her

by HerWingsofGlass



Category: Carol (2015), The Price of Salt - Patricia Highsmith
Genre: Canon Compliant, F/F, Gloves
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-17
Updated: 2019-05-17
Packaged: 2020-03-06 15:13:15
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,777
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18853615
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/HerWingsofGlass/pseuds/HerWingsofGlass
Summary: Carol receives a package in the mail containing her lost gloves and a card from a stranger. She turns to a friend to sort out how best to approach this curious encounter.A somewhat follow-up oneshot to "A Kind of Blissful Insanity"; Carol POV





	Perhaps It Was Freedom Itself That Choked Her

Carol watched the front door close on the receding sliver of yard as Harge led Rindy to his car. Through the window just to the right of the door, she could see him walking her, his heavy hand draped softly over her shoulders, her little face turned up to him as she laughed gaily, Harge was a good father. He tried to be a good father. Just as Carol herself tried to be a good mother… well.

And she did. She cared so deeply. So much that it made her chest ache and her stomach turn. She knew the worrying of a mother. She knew the soaring joy… Still, there was the matter of Harge. Harge and his rage. Harge and his sad, bitter pride. He wouldn’t let go easily. It had been a long while already since they’d separated. He’d agreed to that reluctantly enough, but everything was made more complicated with Rindy. Carol knew Harge wanted to shield Rindy from… from things he couldn’t understand. She knew he wanted to keep things normal and secure for her throughout the separation. Denying it was his way of assuring Rindy—and himself—that everything would be alright. That they would move past things. For him, the movement would be a healing. Carol knew no such healing could occur. At the end of the day, she wanted out. Even now, when she still found herself strangled by ultimatums and his paranoid need to keep up appearances, she knew she was better off. They had been playing house. Nothing more. Rindy was the only real thing to have come from them.

At the sound of two car doors snapping shut, Carol turned from the window, the yard, to face her now empty house. It was a chasm—gaping and massive and hollow. She hated this house. Even when it had been her and Harge she had hated it. It was far too large. Too cold. It was a gesture, not a home. She sighed, feeling the breath leave her lungs and enter into the cold, hollow space of the house. If she breathed enough, panted perhaps, would she ever fill it up? Could she?

She pursed her lips, pinching them, holding them together with her teeth until she felt a sharp pang of protest. She shook her head. She was getting silly. No need for dramatics. Running two hands down the front of her dress, she turned back to the kitchen. Harge had brought in the mail…

Bills. A letter from Anne. An invitation to dinner—another party. And, then, a small brown package of rough paper. Scrawled across the front was thin, curled letters addressed to one “Mrs. Aird.” There was no return address listed. Curious.

She placed the letters aside and gently tore open the edge of the package. Inside was a card: “Merry Christmas from Frankenberg’s Department Store,” signed only with an employee number. Also inside the package, neatly tucked into it, were a pair of brown leather gloves. Gloves that, if she wasn’t mistaken, she had misplaced only a few days before during her trip to buy Rindy’s Christmas present. Curious. 

Carol stared down at the card that accompanied the gloves. Her eyes traced the loops and peaks of the lettering. Someone had sent these to her—the girl, the shop girl at the doll counter. With the dimples. It had to be. She hadn’t stopped anywhere else, hadn’t given anyone else her name. 

That girl… her furious blushes and sweet comments. Carol felt her lips twitch into the smallest hint of a smile as her memory of the girl rushed back in full force. Her hat. Her love of train sets. Her dislike of working there… Carol let her thumb stretch across the heavy paper of the card, running over the numbers. A strange signature. She hadn’t left her name. Perhaps she didn’t want Carol to know who she was. Perhaps. But one could always… call a department store and request to speak to the person whose number sparkled and leapt and winked on a card before them. And, after all, those dimples…

Her smile widened a little.

She couldn’t. Of course she couldn’t. It was a ridiculous thought. Far too forward, far too obvious. What even would she say? 

A thousand ideas fluttered through her mind, each more lovely and absurd than the next. She could ask her to lunch, she thought at once. But for what? Returning some gloves? Lunch with a stranger for returning some gloves? It was preposterous. Why would she agree to meet…

But Carol could not keep her mind from reaching back, summoning up the clear image of the girl’s face flushed with pleasure as she’d complimented her. So eager. So clearly taken. She would say yes. She was so suddenly sure he girl would say yes. Her eyes circled the zero of the employee number. She could sink into that number, fall straight through it forever. Alice down the rabbit hole. 

 

A sharp peal cut through the room, causing Carol to jump and the card to fall from her fingers. A beat held her locked in space as her heart cantered along. The phone to her left let out another volley of sound. At its cue, she spun around, lifting the telephone receiver to her ear.

“Hello?” Her voice sounded light, too full of air.

“What’s wrong now?” said a brassy voice at once. Abby. Abby written in tones of worry and excitement. “I haven’t interrupted you doing something wicked, I hope?” Carol could practically hear her smirk. It worked like a balm, easing the tension in her shoulders, calming the racing of her pulse.

“Hardly,” she returned with a slight smile.

“Pity,” Abby said with indifference, pushing aside the fading repartee for a more pressing subject. “So. Remember that hostess at the Oak room? The tragic one—new, unbelievably beautiful…” Carol grimaced into the phone. Of course. “Blonde,” Abby added after a moment. “Anyway, I had thought she was just a little too… oh, what’s the right word?”

“Alive?” Carol shot out, biting back another sigh. She could very nearly feel Abby scowl over the phone. There was a bit of dirt under her nail—just there. She worried it out.

“Ha ha. Start on with that comedy act, will you? No. She was _attentive_. That’s what I mean. She spent so long fretting with the seating. She laughed _every_ time I spoke to her—”

“Well, that is her job, Abby.” Carol sighed. Here came the weight, the task, the effort. Sometimes these calls of Abby’s wore her down. They felt like conspiratorial dissections. Parsing every second and gesture to find some semblance of interest. A desperate mining for attention in a desert of a world. Carol could sympathize, to a point. It was a deeply lonely thing to recognize within yourself that different way of living, all the while knowing that it was an impossible life. An impossible thing. And so dangerous. And so rare. Of the many women who would flush at a bit of light flirtation, most would shudder to think of anything more. It was a delicate balance, then. A careful reading of mannerisms, of behavior, of dress. An attempt to discern securely enough the interest of a woman before making any sudden moves. All the worse for you if you skipped a step or overlooked a detail. It was harrowing. Nerve wracking. Carol could hardly stand it. Abby often played it like a game—courting was her favorite sport.

It was all surface, of course. Abby rarely fell hard. She wore a bombastic personality proudly, but it was largely for show. Abby was by no means a delicate woman. She was hearty and joyful and strong—but she was also guarded. She did not trust easily. It was by some twist of fate she’d come to trust Carol, even. Carol remembered those few nights years and years ago when things had turned for them. Abby had been joyful then, too, but softer. Softer and romantic and lovely. It hadn’t worked, of course. But that was old news. Another story. Abby and Carol had grown long since, had changed and hardened and sharpened. Abby no longer doted—not on Carol or hardly anyone. For all her flamboyance, she knew better than to throw herself at every girl waiting a table

_or tending a shop counter._

Carol’s eyes flit back to the card laying innocently on her kitchen table. Again, she pressed her lips together. This was different. This was entirely different. 

Abby… Abby was reckless and flirtatious and erratic. She guarded herself where it counted—and those she cared about, of course—but she flirted. God, she flirted. Carol was sure that one day it would come back to bite her. Carol wouldn’t… She didn’t…

“Well, there’s no need to act so lofty about it. I know she wasn’t—I was just—” Abby was hurt. Carol frowned, looking away from the card again. Backtrack, apologize, mend.

“I’m sorry. Abby. I didn’t mean to be short. I suppose I’m just tired.” She sighed, running her fingers through strands of hair on either side of her face. “Harge left not long ago with Rindy, and I’ve just been stuck in myself.”

Abby hummed with quiet understanding. “And how is good old Harge these days? Still a raging asshole?”

Carol looked down at her fingers, splayed across the surface of the table. She drummed her fingers lightly. Truth be told, it was getting harder to watch him take Rindy each time it was his turn to keep her for a few days. Every time they left she felt a cloying sensation, a certainty that maybe, _just maybe_ , he wouldn’t bring her back next time. Maybe he’d find something to keep her from her daughter.

But that was just worry. Each time, without fail, he returned with Rindy. Rindy and a few choice comments. The bitterness lingered long after he left. It was all she could do to keep Rindy distracted from it. God only knows what the divorce would do to her child…

“You know, maybe if you got out a little, you’d have something else to think about. Other than Harge, I mean. _And_ I could be the one making the sensible comments for once. Change things up a bit.” Abby chuckled. The idea of it seemed amusement enough.

But the joke lingered. It festered. Only for a few seconds, but long enough to draw her eyes back toward the card on the table. She felt her lips pull a little—the barest hint of a smile. Something reckless. Something new. Something else to think about.

“It so happens that I received a rather… suggestive card today in the mail.” Carol felt the words leave her mouth as her brain reeled and her pulse raced. Trouble. This was trouble. Abby would push and coax and—

“A card.” Abby said the words slowly. Carol could hear the smile growing around her friend’s words. “A… suggestive card.”

“Mhm.” She ran her finger along the edge of the card and tried very much to sound nonchalant. 

“And what kind of… suggestion was this card making?”

“Oh, you know. It wasn’t, I suppose… all that significant,” Carol felt the burst of fire that only a few moments earlier had fueled her reckless spirit douse quickly. Panic raced along the lower pit of her stomach. Words tumbled from her mouth in an expert attempt a backtracking. “I just left my gloves at the counter of the doll department, and a very kind store clerk sent them back to me with a Christmas card.” She stared hard at the wood grain of the table. Waiting one beat, two, she willed Abby to take the turn with her away from the subject. Please, please, please.

“A complete stranger sent you a Christmas card?” Abby’s voice was steeped in giddy challenge. She smelled blood. 

“Well… Not completely a stranger. We spoke at the counter. I needed to find a gift for Rindy, and, anyway—”

“But this woman—it is a woman?—who you spoke to for five minutes sent you a Christmas card.”

“I—” It was true. There was no denying that it was true. It was a simple thing that had happened. Still, she could see where Abby would take this. She knew the conclusions she would draw. And—Carol found herself surprisingly relieved. Some small corner of herself preened and praised herself for her own discernment. It _was_ significant. It was unusual. Maybe the gloves, sure, but a card? Why send it? And, if, in a move of undue altruism, the shop clerk had simply done so to be kind, why leave off her name? The dots connected themselves. It was an odd move. It was odd and significant and she was not alone in thinking of it as such. “Yes. It’s a puzzle.”

Abby barked out a laugh. “I don’t think there is anything puzzling about it. I think that’s a pretty by-the-book move.”

“Abby—” Carol sighed out in warning. This was the part she had dreaded. For, despite all her dramatics, Abby was only confirming the thoughts in Carol’s own head. This girl, this veritable stranger had sent out a quiet little beacon. A beacon she could answer. Or not. 

“Carol, look. This thing with Harge—it’s not going well. And I don’t mean legally. I mean personally. It is hitting you hard. I know it is. Now, I can’t be around all night and day. God only knows what his reaction would be if I were. But, maybe… Maybe a new… friend. Maybe that would help.” Abby paused for a moment as if weighing her words carefully ounce by ounce. Carol focused on the cool line on the back of her throat where each fresh breath interrupted the warmth of her body. She wanted to hold onto the coolness—cling to it until her lungs burned in protest. She released the hold, missing it, hating for a moment the pervasive warm.

“And,” Abby continued, “Maybe it is just friends.” She paused again. Carol raised her eyes to the wall in front of her: the white painted shelves holding pans and jars, the stove scrubbed clean, the sink, the window. “Doesn’t have to be more than that. But you deserve… something, Carol. You deserve a life. You know that, don’t you? A life separate from him?”

Carol pressed her lips together and her fingers tightened slightly around the Bakelite receiver. A life separate. Could such a thing exist? Something Harge couldn’t touch, couldn’t enter? She wanted it. Badly. Since they had agreed on the divorce, Harge seemed to loom everywhere. In the house, every dark room pooled his shadows. Every corner shielded him from sight. 

It wasn’t fear. It was something else. Something claustrophobic. He was in the walls, all over the floors of this house. More and more Carol, found herself leaning on Abby—calling on her for an evening adventure, a meeting for drinks out, a trip with Rindy. Or even having her here, having her fill the strange house with her booming laugh, her indecent humor. It changed things. It tinted the light, lifted the air. It made all the difference. 

But Abby couldn’t be here all the time. She was a sore spot. A particular issue between Carol and Harge. Carol knew it. Abby was the living example of what she could not deny, what they hadn’t been able to get past. And Abby had stayed, had remained a close companion—surely, as now a friend rather than lover, but an important figure in Carol’s life nonetheless. Harge had been the one removed. He had been the one to take an apartment elsewhere. 

Abby was right. But. This girl? This young, unsure thing?

Not so unsure that she hadn’t reached out, thought Carol. And, indeed, she had. It was a bold move. One that begged a bold return. 

“Maybe,” Carol began at long last, “I might call to invite her to lunch.”

 

Long after they had said their goodbyes and Carol had replaced the receiver in its cradle, Carol sat at the dining room table. She ran the tips of her fingers over the smooth slickness of her gloves, following their seams like so many unknown paths or so many lines written out in braille. And then, there was the card. Tucked beneath the gloves, its corners peeked out—showing only the scrawled employee number in the corner. Every so often, Carol would feel her little finger slip, traveling down to the paper of the card, brushing the indents left by the written number.

**Author's Note:**

> Hello again! This is a fun thing I've been sculpting for a few days now. 
> 
> I have to say, while I like attending to Carol in the moments we didn't get to see--the points where she must have wondered about engaging Therese, about starting something--I find Carol's voice a lot more difficult to write into. No doubt this is in part because she is meant to be an inaccessible character. She is impenetrably enigmatic. It's hard to get a good grasp on her psyche. Still, I think I like what I've come up with thusfar. She has a lot of the film's Carol in her--someone who puts on a strong face, but has some deep recesses of vulnerability that sometimes alarms even her. The film's Carol is impulsive when she feels helpless, but she isn't headstrong in the same way that Abby is. And, with Rindy to think about... It must have been a decision worth thinking through.


End file.
